Both boy and donkey seemed a little bewildered by the crowds round about them the streets were thronged with people strolling in the sunshine after their day's work. The boy, who appeared to be about fifteen, was bright-eyed and black-haired, and looked as if he had spent most of his life out of doors he carried a knapsack, and wore rough, warm garments of frieze.

A family tree of the Dukes of Battersea will be found on page 86.ġ On a fine warm evening in late summer, over a hundred years ago, a boy might have been seen leading a donkey across Southwark Bridge in the City of London. The action of this book takes place in the same period as that of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase: the reign of King James III, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, when England was still sadly plagued by wolves. JOAN AIKEN Black Hearts in Battersea PUFFIN BOOKS Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published by Jonathan Cape 1965 published in Puffin Books 1965 Copyright Joan Aiken, 1964.

Simon's new adventures include fire, flood, wolves, kidnapping, poisoning, an air balloon, explosion, and shipwreck his companions in danger are staunch little Dido Twite, the noble Duke and Duchess of Battersea, and Sophie, who is to become more than a friend to him - though not a sweetheart. And the cellar was piled full of muskets and gunpowder. He planned to lodge with his friend Dr Field at the house of a Mr and Mrs Twite in Southwark - but Dr Field had disappeared, and no one would admit that he had ever lived there. He really went there to study art, but being Simon he walked slap into a new mystery. Do you remember Simon, the boy in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, who lived in a cave in the woods and rescued Bonnie and Sylvia Green from Mrs Brisket's horrible orphanage? Well, when all those excitements were over Simon went to London.

Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken